


Call Me, Maybe

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Reunions, Gen, hugging and crying, reunionating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 09:37:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18808528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: Jason memorized the number, even though he knew he was never going use it.





	Call Me, Maybe

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to lembeau for letting me hash this out with her, and for looking it over as I wrote. Title from Carly Rae Jepsen. What even are comics timelines.

### Before

The trip didn't suck nearly as much as Jason expected it to. Skiing was hard, and he didn't understand why anyone would do it for fun ("rich people," he muttered, as his nose dripped and his fingertips went numb while they waited for the lift; Dick laughed, which wasn't nearly as hard as making Bruce laugh, but was rewarding in its own way) when they could be hanging out inside the lodge, drinking hot cocoa and reading by the fire, but it was a useful skill, so he learned it.

Dick was actually pretty cool (really cool, if Jason was going to be honest about it, at least with himself) when he wasn't constantly fighting with Bruce, and it was nice to get some insight on things—Batman, crimefighting, dealing with the snot-nosed brats at Gotham Academy—from the original Robin. 

"I know how Bruce can be," Dick said as they headed back to Gotham. "So if you need someone to talk to, or to bounce ideas off of, or even just to vent, give me a call." He handed over half a Sundollar receipt with a phone number scribbled on it. "That's my work phone," he added. "So don't go posting it on Tumblr."

"I don't even _have_ a Tumblr," Jason scoffed. Bruce had made him pick his social media platforms carefully, and he'd picked Instagram, where many of his favorite meals were memorialized, and Twitter, so he could refine his punning skills and also insult neckbeards who had terrible opinions about books. 

He memorized the number, even though he knew he was never going to use it.

*

While Jason was lying there in that warehouse, watching his time run out, he thought vaguely of all the cool things he'd done and all the things he'd never get to do. He hoped Batman would get there in time, but he wasn't stupid and he wasn't an optimist—he knew this was likely the end of it for him, and he didn't—couldn't—blame Bruce. He'd made his choices and some of them had been bad ones. That wasn't Bruce's fault, and Jason hoped he didn't blame himself too much. Jason would never regret boosting the tires off the Batmobile, never regret his time with Bruce and Alfred, or being Robin.

That said, as the timer on the bomb ticked down, he ran through the brief list of regrets he did have. That he'd been sullen and angry at Alfred before he ran away; that he'd run away at all instead of trusting Bruce; that he'd never finish reading The Stand; that his lone mission with the Titans had gone so badly. 

That he never actually called Dick when he needed to talk. It would have been nice, there at the end, to have another voice in his ear to drown out the Joker. It would have been nice to actually have a brother, he thought, before he couldn't think at all.

*

### After

Dick was in the process of shoving a spoonful of cereal into his mouth while simultaneously trying to button his shirt when his phone started vibrating across the kitchen table. He didn't recognize the number, but that wasn't unusual; Babs liked to keep him on his toes by never using the same number twice, and on this phone—the one he used for Nightwing business—that was probably wise.

"Hello?" he said around a mouthful of Crocky Crunch, wincing in anticipation of a scolding from Alfred or Babs for answering with his mouth full. He did have manners, really he did. But if it was an emergency, he'd rather be rude and save time. 

All he heard in response was breathing. 

Frowning, he tried again with, "Is everything okay?"

Still nothing but heavy breathing, so he hung up and forgot about it. Until happened again two days later, and then again, three days after that. 

"The numbers aren't the same," he said after explaining the whole thing to Babs, "so I don't know if there's one pervert or three."

Babs hummed in agreement. "They're random payphones," she said. "One outside that porno theater in the Bowery, one on a corner outside a bodega near Sheldon Park, and one inside the Wayne Foundation Community Youth Center in Crime Alley. Probably the only working ones left in the city." He could hear her keyboard clacking away. "No security footage that I can find, either. Are you sure this isn't some angry ex who put your number on the bathroom wall at the Boom Boom Room? 'For a good time call Dick?'"

Dick couldn't help the snort of laughter that escaped. "And ask for Bruce?"

That won him a laugh in return, which made him feel warm and pleased with himself—since the shooting and...everything else that followed, it had been harder than ever to make her laugh. 

"Am I being paranoid?"

"Maybe," she said. "But given how few people have the number, it's probably just a dialing mistake."

Dick sighed and would have let it go at that, but it started up again four nights later—he was back in Gotham for Halloween, which was always a nightmare—and he was in the middle of a fight with Penguin's goons when his phone went off repeatedly.

"You need to get that?" one of the thugs asked when it started buzzing for the seventh time. "We understand if you need to take a break."

Dick kicked him in the jaw and finished the fight before checking his phone. This time all seven calls were from the same number.

"Bat—Babs?"

"No names in the field," Batman said. "And keep the comms clear of chatter."

Dick rolled his eyes behind his mask and switched his comm to a private channel. Babs's new tech setup was pretty sweet. He was going to have to remember to call her Oracle, though.

"You got anything for me?"

"It's a payphone in a restaurant in the Bowery, not far from the Sprang Bridge." She paused, then, "No security footage of the phone. Restaurant has no known connection to any local gangs, though I'm sure they pay protection money just like everybody else."

"Can you connect me?"

The phone rang and rang and nobody answered it.

"Try the restaurant."

She huffed but spared him the lecture on how she wasn't his personal operator. 

A woman's voice answered, "Golden Dragon."

"Someone called me from this number."

"About your order?"

"No," he said, "thanks," and hung up. "Could be one of the delivery guys misdialing, I guess."

"Hm."

"Now you sound like B."

"No need to get mean."

"I wasn't—" He sighed. "Talk to you later?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

* 

Two mornings later, just as he'd finally fallen asleep, there was another flurry of calls. He groaned and forwarded the number to Babs, and then fell back to sleep for four hours.

He woke to the phone actually ringing—his civilian phone with the obnoxious ringtone he never silenced like a normal person. Maybe it was finally time to change it from "Toxic" by Britney Spears, which he'd chosen partly for its ability to annoy Bruce...and Jason. No, he wasn't quite ready to change it yet. 

"Yeah?"

"Did you know that your phone number is one digit off from The Party Lounge in Robbinsville?"

"You sound disgustingly chipper for," he pulled the phone away from his ear so he could look at the time, "seven forty-eight a.m."

"Coffee," Babs replied. "Nectar of the gods. And their all-knowing oracles."

"Let me guess, it's a strip joint."

"Got it in one, Hunk Wonder."

"Well, Alfred's been hinting that I should get a day job, but I don't think I'd like the requirements."

She laughed softly. "Mystery solved. Go back to sleep, Dick."

"You first."

"No, you."

They went back and forth a couple more times, and she promised she'd get some rest, so he hung up. He was awake now, though, so he put the whole thing out of his mind and went for a run.

*

He didn't get another heavy breather or serial hanger-upper for eight days, and had written it off as random Gotham weirdness when it happened again. He was in town early for Thanksgiving (crime in Gotham did not generally take holidays), eating a dollar slice on the roof of an apartment building on the Upper East Side when the phone started buzzing. He wiped his greasy fingertips off on his uniform so he could swipe to accept the call. 

"Listen, this joke isn't funny anymore. Not that it ever was in the first place."

There was a long moment filled with heavy breathing and then a rusty voice said, "Bruce? B?"

Dick froze for a second, his own breathing loud in his ears. "Who is this?"

"B?" The voice was heartbreakingly young and almost familiar. His mind must have been playing tricks on him.

"No, but—Where are you? I'm coming to find you."

"B?"

"Stay on the line." The order came out sounding like Bruce, and Dick wasn't sure if he'd intended that or not.

Dick launched himself across the rooftops in the closest thing to panic his training would allow. He tapped his earbud and said, "Babs—Oracle—I've got in him on the line. Can you trace the call?"

"Is everything all right?"

"No. Yes. I don't know." He turned his attention back to the phone and grumbled. "Can you route the call to my comm so I can have my hands free?"

"Work, work, work," she muttered, but there was a click and he could hear his mystery caller breathing in his ear without holding up the phone, which he tucked back into its very snug pocket before continuing his way north and east towards the Bowery. It was where most of the previous calls had originated.

"Thanks, O." He needed the grapple now, but he kept up a steady stream of inconsequential chatter about what he was planning to eat on Thursday for Thanksgiving dinner, including a huge slice of apple pie. 

"Pie?" the kid said, startling him out of his monologue. "Alfie's pie?" For a second, Dick thought he was hearing things—he could have said _apple_ —but on the other end of the comm, Babs gasped, so she must have heard it too. 

"N, he's outside a smoke shop two blocks from Leslie's clinic."

"The one with the Batman bong in the window?"

"That's the one."

Dick laughed, suddenly, giddy with the thought that the impossible was possible, and the rhythm of the breathing in his ear changed, until it sounded like the kid was laughing too. 

"Don't get careless. It could still be a trap."

"I know. I know. I just—What if it's _not_?"

"I know," she repeated. "I know."

He swung down onto the sidewalk in front of the phone booth—a phone booth, for Christ's sake. He should have known there were still five working payphones in Gotham, all of them clustered in the same general area. Bruce would have known. But Jason hadn't called Bruce. And even from behind, through the scratched and dirty glass, Dick could tell it was him.

"Oracle—"

"I'm not going anywhere," she promised. 

"Okay." He took a deep breath and walked around to the other side of the kiosk, so Jason could see him, and then tapped on the glass. "Hey," he said. "I'm here." He kind of expected rolled eyes and a sarcastic response along the lines of "no shit, Sherlock," or "thank you, Captain Obvious," but Jason just stared at him, the phone dangling, forgotten, from limp fingers.

"B—Bruce?"

"No, Jay—Jason, it's me."

Jason stared at him, head cocked inquisitively, mouth and eyebrows furrowed in a frown.

Dick tapped his chest. "Nightwing." And then pointed at Jason. "Little Wing."

The frown cleared and Jason beamed at him, looking far younger than his fifteen—no, sixteen now, if he was here and alive again somehow—years. "Dick Wing."

Dick laughed a little wetly. He couldn't cry with the mask on—it was uncomfortable and made his vision blurry, so he blinked back the tears. "Yeah," he said. "O, I'm going to take him to the clinic. Can you let B know ASAP?"

"On it."

"B?"

"Yeah, buddy, B's coming." Dick ignored the smell of body odor and unwashed clothes that clung to Jason and slung his arm around the kid's skinny shoulders. He was so small. Had he always been so small? Dick couldn't remember. "We're going to see Leslie—Doc Thompkins, remember her? B's going to meet us there."

Jason was surprisingly—worryingly—compliant, or maybe it was the promise that Bruce was on his way that made him so easy to lead down the block and across the street towards the clinic.

Leslie was closing up—it was almost midnight—when they arrived on her doorstep. She opened her mouth and then closed it again as the light of recognition dawned on her face. 

"Jason?" She reached out a hand and brushed his dirty cheek. 

"Looks that way," Dick replied. They'd still need to run tests to confirm his identity, but Dick was sure it was him. He'd given him the phone number to call when he needed it and Jason had finally used it. It _had_ to be him. "B should be here shortly so can we take this inside?"

"Of course." She fumbled with the keys but got the door open, and soon enough Jason was sitting on an examine table, arms crossed over his chest, refusing to let them remove his hoodie so she could examine him.

"I don't like the sound of his breathing," she said. 

Dick leaned forward and put a hand on the back of Jason's neck, pressing their foreheads together. "Come on, Jay. I know it's been rough and a little scary, but Doc Thompkins is going to take good care of you."

"Want Alf," Jason mumbled, lips forming a pout.

"You'll see him soon," Dick promised. "But before we go home, you've got to let the doctor look you over."

"Home? B?"

"Yeah," Dick said, and because he was a dramatic son of a bitch, that was when Batman burst through the door of the exam room.

"Nightwing, Oracle said—" He caught sight of Jason and froze, the same way Dick had earlier. " _Jason_?"

Jason beamed up at him and flung his arms wide. "Bruce!" 

Bruce took one long step and gathered Jason into his arms. "Jason," he said, pressing his face into the crook of Jason's neck. Jason squirmed, because Dick knew from experience that that was not comfortable, and Bruce leaned back long enough to pull off the cowl before he did it again. "Jason." His voice was rough, broken, and Dick wanted to look away but he also wanted to drink in the best thing that had happened to them in a long time.

"Home," Jason said, voice muffled by Bruce's shoulder.

"Yeah, Jay, right after the Doc looks you over," Dick said, his own voice a little wobbly, "we're going home."

end


End file.
